Ever since the early days of television, people have been calling movies the "big screen" and TV the "small screen."
That made sense because people watched movies on large theater screens and saw TV programs on sets with 15- or 17-inch picture tubes. Now, half a century later, the life cycle for movies has changed dramatically. Although films still start out in theaters, most of their time in exhibition is no longer being spent on big screens.
In fact, after today's shorter theatrical runs films wind up playing on smaller in-home screens via television, cable, satellite, video on demand or DVD or as streaming video content on computers connected to the Internet. Before long, movies will also probably be playing in some form on PDAs and mobile phones. The question this raises is whether it's time for Hollywood to rethink making movies for the big screen and start producing them to optimize their playability on all those smaller screens that now generate such big revenues.
The size of the movie screen has played a major role over the years in determining the kind of movies Hollywood makes. When television first appeared in the early 1950s and became an instant competitor to movies because it enabled people to see entertainment without having to leave their homes and without having to pay for it (unless you count watching commercials as paying for it!), Hollywood reacted by making the big screen even bigger. Screen size became a major selling point in 1953 with 20th Century Fox's release of "The Robe," the first movie to come out in the then new widescreen CinemaScope process.
"Robe," a Biblical epic set in ancient Rome, starred Richard Burton, Jean Simmons and Victor Mature and was promoted by Fox as being, "The first motion picture in CinemaScope -- the modern miracle you see without glasses!" The reference to glasses, of course, meant that unlike the 3-D movies of the early '50s it wasn't necessary to wear awkward cardboard frame glasses with colored plastic lenses to see films shot in CinemaScope. 3-D provided a dimensional effect that television couldn't give its audience, but CinemaScope promised moviegoers an easy to watch super-wide image that dwarfed any TV screen then or now, for that matter.
Fox actually shot "Robe" in both the standard screen format at the time as well as the new anamorphic process based on lenses that had been invented in France by Professor Henri Chretien, from whom Fox had licensed what it called CinemaScope. As it turned out, the demand for the widescreen "Robe" was so great that it was only exhibited in CinemaScope. There was great interest in Hollywood at the time in widescreen formats following the success of Cinerama, a widescreen format that required three projectors and specially constructed expensive three-part screens. As a result, Cinerama wasn't something that could be shown in more than a handful of theaters and films had to be shot especially for Cinerama exhibition.
CinemaScope's very wide frame was a rectangular type shape that originally had an aspect ratio of 2.66:1 compared to the roughly square shape with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 that movies had previously had. The precise measurements of the CinemaScope frame changed slightly after the process was developed. By the time "Robe" actually came out the aspect ratio was 2.55:1, a change that reflected having to make room on the frame for four stripes of magnetic stereo sound. In 1955 it was reduced to 2.35:1 so as to accommodate mono sound striping because exhibitors had balked at investing in stereo sound equipment. And in 1970 it became 2.39:1, a change that basically involved screen masking and projector settings.
From the start, CinemaScope's screen shape had a major impact on Hollywood and began to influence the type of movies that the industry made. After Fox introduced the widescreen process it made it available for licensing by other studios. MGM and Disney adopted it very quickly and before long Warner Bros., Columbia and Universal signed on to use it for at least their biggest productions. Paramount, however, chose to develop its own wide screen format, which it called VistaVision. The screen in VistaVision was essentially a large square shaped frame rather than a wide rectangle like the CinemaScope frame.
Regardless of the studio, the films made in CinemaScope were the type that worked best in the widescreen format -- like swords and sandals epics, westerns, historical adventures, war stories and other big action films. Fox followed "Robe" with two other CinemaScope releases -- the romantic comedy "How to Marry a Millionaire," which had some major star power in Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe and Lauren Bacall and was available to be turned very quickly into a CinemaScope release; and the undersea adventure "Beneath the 12 Mile Reef."
In 1954 Disney released its own undersea epic "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," starring Kirk Douglas and James Mason, in CinemaScope. Two years later RKO produced the action adventure "The Conqueror," starring John Wayne and Susan Hayward, in CinemaScope (although the widescreen process that RKO had officially adopted for most of its films was called Superscope).
Looking at other early CinemaScope releases that came out through Fox it's clear that historical action adventures were the genre that the studio felt worked best in the new format -- such as the adventure "King of the Kyber Rifles," starring Tyrone Power; and the historical epics "Prince Valiant," starring James Mason and Janet Leigh, "The Egyptian," starring Jean Simmons, Victor Mature and Gene Tierney, and "Demetrius and the Gladiators," starring Victor Mature and Susan Hayward. MGM turned out such CinemaScope epic adventures as "Knights of the Round Table," starring Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner and Mel Ferrer; and the adventure "Moonfleet," starring Stewart Granger and George Sanders.
By 1966 Fox had moved away from CinemaScope to embrace Panavision, another widescreen process. Panavision had started producing anamorphic lenses and camera systems in the early '50s and gradually its process caught on with other studios as they began closing their in-studio camera departments. One of Fox's first Panavision releases was the large scale World War II action adventure "The Sand Pebbles," directed by Robert Wise and starring Steve McQueen. Another early Panavision title from Fox was the action drama "Von Ryan's Express," starring Frank Sinatra.
Just from this handful of widescreen titles it's clear that the studios recognized that their new big screen formats were very well suited for large scale action adventure epics and that, in turn, fueled the production of such pictures for decades to come. Without writing a movie history textbook on the subject right now, let's just say that for the next 40 or 50 years the fact that the big screen was really big resulted in the production of movies that were designed to be big in scope. Small intimate dramas or nice little romantic comedies really didn't use the widescreen format to great advantage. If they weren't shot just right they ended up with scenes in which two huge noses were facing each other on the screen.
All of this, of course, goes back four or five decades and reflects Hollywood's need to differentiate itself from what was then the new and growing medium of network television. As people bought themselves expensive TV sets for their living rooms and later on invested in a second set for their bedrooms, they wound up spending more time in front of the tube. It took years for the novelty of being able to watch entertainment at home for free to wear off. Hollywood considered getting people away from their TV screens and out of their homes to be a life or death struggle. Wide screen movies were a key way to get the job done.
In recent years Hollywood has relied not just on wide screens, but on all sorts of computer generated visual effects that create images that are best viewed on the enormous screens available in today's megaplexes. There also have been tremendous gains in terms of what can be done with surround sound. All of this has served not only to lure people into theaters, but also to shape the type of content movies now have. The popcorn pictures that are so closely associated with summer moviegoing are films that are meant to be seen on very large screens. The same is true of virtually all of Hollywood's major franchises such as the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, the "Star Wars" series, the "Harry Potter" films, the "Spider-Man" movies, etc.
This model has worked very successfully now for about five decades, providing Hollywood with something to sell that television can't equal. Today's flat panel screens measuring, let's say, 52 inches are huge compared to the 12 or 15 or 17 or even 19 inch screens of the '50s and '60s, but they don't really measure up to those hefty megaplex screens in suburban shopping malls across the country.
Unfortunately, the film business has undergone seismic changes in the last five years and, again without writing a book about it here, one of the effects of these changes is that movies now spend much less of their life cycle on large theater screens and much more of their time on smaller in-home screens. Theatrical runs are shorter these days because contemporary movie marketing serves to generate the most possible business over a film's opening weekend. It's a front-loaded release pattern that expects there to be significant percentage drops in the second, third and fourth weekends. By then most films have pretty much played themselves out. There are a few, of course, that have better staying power, but not very many. Looking at last weekend's boxoffice chart, the longest running film in the Top Ten was "40 Year Old Virgin," which was in its sixth weekend and had a cume of $96.9 million. The longest running title in the Top 25 was "March of the Penguins," which was in its 14th weekend and had a cume of $72.8 million.
The window for DVD release has been shrinking, of course, so that it's now about 3 and a half months after films open theatrically. Anyone who doesn't expect that window to shrink quite a bit more hasn't been paying attention lately. Films are, therefore, spending more of their lives playing on small screens than on large ones. They're seen on relatively small television sets when they play on free TV or premium channels on cable or satellite TV, on small airline screens, on small computer monitors, on small laptop screens and before long they'll probably be playing on really tiny PDA and mobile phone displays. None of these smaller screens is a particularly great way to exhibit huge special effects driven movies. They actually are a better size screen for the kind of small, intimate story or character driven dramas that the major studios have pretty much stopped making.
Since the crushing financial burden Hollywood faces today is directly tied to the making of big special effects driven product designed for big screen exhibition, it might make good business sense for the studios to consider the alternative of making smaller product designed to make the most of the smaller screens that those films are actually going to wind up being seen on.
Screen size has dictated content in Hollywood for about five decades now. It made great sense in 1952 when the studios were reeling from the advent of television plus the Justice Department's Paramount consent decree, which divorced exhibition from production and distribution and forced the studios to give up their theater chains. The same thinking really doesn't make as much sense in 2005, the age of instant gratification when screens are shrinking as the public embraces the idea of being able to have the entertainment it wants whenever and wherever it wants it.
Filmmaker flashbacks: From Feb. 19, 1986's column: "Despite all the talk about how valuable the MGM film library will be to Ted Turner after he takes over the studio, most people haven't the foggiest notion what the library contains‌Of the approximately 4,600 films in the MGM/UA library there are about 2,200 MGM titles; approximately 950 United Artists pictures; some 750 Warner Bros. films; and around 700 RKO movies.
"The UA library, which is to become an asset of the new United Artists, features a half-dozen films that won Best Picture Oscars and about 20 other titles that were nominated for Best Pictures. There also are 14 James Bonds and Woody Allens, 'Pink Panthers' and 'Rockys;' plus 120 short subjects and 300 cartoons, of which about 120 are 'Pink Panthers.'
"The MGM library includes some 600-plus silent movies; nine titles that have won Best Picture Oscars and over 40 films that were nominated for Best Picture. There are approximately 1,190 short subjects, including 52 'Our Gangs;' and 480 cartoons, of which about 250 are 'Tom & Jerrys.' The Warner Bros. library, which also goes to Turner, is pre-1950 vintage. It includes 50 silent films; approximately 570 cartoons, of which about 230 are 'Popeyes;' two films that won Best Picture Oscars; and 18 Best Picture nominees. Almost all of the films in the RKO library, which also goes to Turner, were released prior to 1950. Only free television rights in the U.S. are available to the RKO films."
Martin Grove is a regular contributor to CNN Headline News' "Showbiz Tonight" weeknights live at 4-5 p.m., PT (7-8 p.m., ET) with repeats at 7 & 9 p.m., PT (10 p.m. & Midnight, ET).